When I went to hairdressing school, back in the mid-80's, I got a bit more of an education than just how to cut hair. My hairdressing school was in a bit of a rough area of town, and we often had people come in who I did not usually encounter in my day-to-day life in the north end suburbs of my white-bread and Velveeta city.
In the morning, we had class time, whereby the teachers lectured, and then we had practical, hands-on training in the afternoon.
One morning, the topic under discussion was how to talk to clients in a professional, mature manner. We were cautioned not to talk about religion or politics, and to keep the details of our latest breakup/eviction/"Girls Nite Tequila Shot-a-Thon" to ourselves. We were encouraged to ask the client open-ended questions, to get them to talk about themselves and also, to keep the conversation geared to innocuous, benign, lily-white topics.
That afternoon, my first client was a young man, about my age. Taking the morning's advice to heart, I asked him if he grew up locally, and he said yes. Trying my best to keep the conversation going, I asked where he went to high school; this city's not too big, and since we looked to be of the same vintage, perhaps we had some acquaintances in common. He replied that he hadn't gone to high school.
I said "really, I thought everyone had to go to high school.".
To which he flatly replied "Not if you killed a guy, you don't."
And I stopped talking after that.
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